Go to page

This post is not intended to be an end-to-end guide to demonstrate hackintosh installation and setup. There are already many great posts for that. I want to focus on some small, but critical features after your machine is up and running. Specially on this popular, but old architecture. It's more about summarizing all the helpful posts I read and followed.

I have been using hackintosh for years, but rarely had a version that has perfect sleep / wake setup. It's one of the biggest productivity problems since every morning I need to re-open all my windows again.

Originally, my setup was with GTX 750 Ti graphics card. After many research, I heard ppl saying newer hardware could resolve the sleep issue. So I upgraded to a GTC 1050 Ti. However, I still have the same sleep wake issue -- be more specific, the machine goes to sleep just fine, but when it wakes up, only the machine is running, the monitor stays in sleep mode and cannot be woken up.

I asked for help in many forums, but could never get a solid solution. Finally I decided to give AMD a shot. Since I don't play game, I bought a low-end RX 560 card. Once I pop it in and with RadeonDeInit enabled, the sleep / wake up works already.

My lesson here is, AMD graphics card nowadays has much better support from OSX. If you have graphics related issues that are hard to resolve, try AMD cards.

2. Perfect CPU Power Management

CPU power management is important because it not only saves power for you, but also makes sleep / wake working better. Fore this one, just follow this excellent guide from @toleda : macOS Native CPU/IGPU Power Management. Following are how my CPU looks like after the setup.

3. Perfect Hand Off

Hand Off / Continuity is one important productivity feature for me. I often need to airdrop files from my iPhone to this hackintosh, or share clipboard, or even unlock the machine with my Apple Watch.

To get hand off working properly, the most important part is to have WiFi/Bluetooth chip identical to real Mac computers. After some research, I picked Broadcom BCM94360CS2 AP. It's the same chip from MacBook Air 2012/2013. From its Amazon review here, I already know it's working fine with hand off. I bought an used one from eBay, also with an PCIE adapter, something like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0772H1PSG/?tag=tonymacx86com-20.

I also have to enable the onboard ethernet ports, using AtherosL1cEthernet.kext (see attached) and IntelMausiEthernet.kext. Otherwise somehow hand off is not happening for me. Finally, after all these setup, it also took me a few restarts to get it work.

Unlock with Apple Watch is a little tricker, maybe due to the fact that I recently changed a new watch. I have to sign out of iCloud from both desktop and iPhone, and sign back in; and also disable and re-enable hand off features on hackintosh, iPhone and Apple Watch. Finally it worked.

Disable Handoff on your hackintosh, iPhone and Apple Watch, and re-enable them again.

If still does't work, try this:

Log out iCloud from your hackintosh;

Go to browser, log in iCloud.com;

Remove your hackintosh machine from "My Devices" and "Find my iPhone" list; make sure your hackintosh is gone completely from your iCloud account -- you may have multiple instances there due to your previous debugging sessions. Remove all instances related to this hackintosh machint;

Reboot your hackintosh;

Log in iCloud again, and verify your hackintosh has been added back to your iCloud "My Devices";

Re-enable "Handoff" and "Unlock with Apple Watch" from Settings. Your hand-off, continuity, shared clipboard and Apple Watch unlock should all work now.

4. Fix Chrome Random Freeze Problem

I originally posted the question here: RX560 / Z77X-UD5H: Chrome random freeze / Unstable Hardware Acceleration, but didn't get any reply. It took me a while to find this problem. The symptom is, when I am browsing certain websites, such as LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook, my screen would freeze. Mouse still works, but no response anywhere. I can still SSH into the machine remotely, but couldn't see any helpful log event. Mouse clicks obviously still trigger events because when the screen goes to sleep, a mouse click would bring it back. However, the whole UI is frozen and only reboot can fix it.

After some research, I found that no freeze once I disable Chrome's hardware acceleration: go to Chrome "Settings". search for "Hardware Acceleration", and disable the option "Use hardware acceleration when available". That tells me that this freeze must be related to graphics system. Also even this trick works, browsing become noticeably slow. So I decided to find a real solution for it.

During my research, I found this article: HOW TO FIX VIDEO RENDERING ISSUES IN FCPX HIGH SIERRA (HARDWARE ENCODING & HEVC SUPPORT) (Please google the link, tonymacx86 seems not allow competitor website links, LOL). Even though the original author was talking about freezes using Final Cut Pro, but the symptom is really similar to what I encountered -- UI frozen but mouse still works. I read through the article and found one important different setting from my system: he enabled the onboard Intel graphics card. Because I don't use dual monitor, I always disabled onboard Intel graphics card in the past. So I followed his instructions, and enabled onboard graphics card. Indeed, the freeze problem is gone!

However, I have different problem now -- if I connect my 4K monitor to the AMD RX560 card, I got black screen during boot and the system would immediately restart once reached that stage. To resolve it, I follow this guide "Integrated and Discrete Graphics, Working Together" to set my ig-platform-id to 0166000A. In system BIOS, I also have to leave the IGPU as "Initial First". I just leave my 4K monitor connected to RX560 and the system boots fine from there.

4. Conclusion

After all these tweaks, and many years of playing with hackintosh, I learn that, the most reliable, and future proof way to solve a compatibility issue is to using native hardware. Hand off is one good example. AMD RX 560 is another. I also use Marvell Yukon Gigabit Adapter 88E8053 chipset based PCIe network card and it has always been working for many generations of OSX since 2012.

Also, once you are familiar with your hackintosh system, try NOT to use Unibeast. It's easy and convenience, but also too generic. When I started, I use many files from this repository from @VioletDragon to setup my computer: Z77X-UD5H-Clover-Hotpatch-Patches. Later I swapped many files for newer versions and necessary updates. At the end of the post, I also attached my BIOS setup file and EFI folder (without themes folder) for your reference. Hopefully it's helpful for you.

Finally, there are still SSDT patch files in my EFI folder that I don't completely understand what they are for (see bellow). But they seems doing no harm. If you know what they are for and how to convert them into config.plist patches, please let me know. Thanks!

Hi guys,
maybe someone can help me here? I tried to update to High Sierra with my old setup but having trouble with the Bios settings of the GA-Z77X-UD5H. Apart from over clocking I followed the settings from the "best post for BIOS setup for Z77x-UD5H" link on this page with the recommended Bios version 16J but after saving and exiting Bios my computer does not recognise the monitor anymore and the screen stays black so I cannot procede with the USB boot stick in order to install High Sierra.
The motherboard displays either A9 (BIOS Setup is started) error code when I start holding down F12 to choose a boot drive or A6 (Detect and install all currently connected SCSI devices) when I press nothing. As I understand this means it either loads the Bios but I cannot see it (A9) or when I do not press any key it does not boot and just gets stuck during boot up (A6).
Switching to the onboard graphic card did not work either. I can only use CMOS reset switch and re-enter the Bios afterwards, but no matter which options I tried so far, I always run into the same issue.
As I accidentally touched the Fast Boot settings once I also re-flashed the Bios to version 16j again because in the settings guide it says that CMOS reset would not help in that case and the firmware needs to be updated to fix any problems.
Before this endeavour I used Bios version 14 and had Yosemite running. I really need to install a newer system because I need a Audio Software that does not work with Yosemite anymore.

Hi guys,
maybe someone can help me here? I tried to update to High Sierra with my old setup but having trouble with the Bios settings of the GA-Z77X-UD5H. Apart from over clocking I followed the settings from the "best post for BIOS setup for Z77x-UD5H" link on this page with the recommended Bios version 16J but after saving and exiting Bios my computer does not recognise the monitor anymore and the screen stays black so I cannot procede with the USB boot stick in order to install High Sierra.
The motherboard displays either A9 (BIOS Setup is started) error code when I start holding down F12 to choose a boot drive or A6 (Detect and install all currently connected SCSI devices) when I press nothing. As I understand this means it either loads the Bios but I cannot see it (A9) or when I do not press any key it does not boot and just gets stuck during boot up (A6).
Switching to the onboard graphic card did not work either. I can only use CMOS reset switch and re-enter the Bios afterwards, but no matter which options I tried so far, I always run into the same issue.
As I accidentally touched the Fast Boot settings once I also re-flashed the Bios to version 16j again because in the settings guide it says that CMOS reset would not help in that case and the firmware needs to be updated to fix any problems.
Before this endeavour I used Bios version 14 and had Yosemite running. I really need to install a newer system because I need a Audio Software that does not work with Yosemite anymore.

I’m pretty sure you can’t use that graphics card for High Sierra. Do a search gtx650ti High Sierra for more info. It suffers from the same problem the 660’s have. I have the same mobo and graphics card as you so I have been holding off on High Sierra until I get a new graphics card. The current setup works great in Sierra, so if your music software allows it, upgrade to Sierra instead.

The Radeon RX 560’s seems like a reasonably priced/working replacement for our 650ti’s

Hi djcoma, thanks for your quick reply and the tip regarding the graphic card. However, this should not pose a problem with the start up into Bios does it? High Sierra is not yet installed. Actually the OS is still Yosemite and I updated the Bios firmware in order to prepare the installation of High Sierra. I will look into the compatibility of the graphic card though.

Hi djcoma, thanks for your quick reply and the tip regarding the graphic card. However, this should not pose a problem with the start up into Bios does it? High Sierra is not yet installed. Actually the OS is still Yosemite and I updated the Bios firmware in order to prepare the installation of High Sierra. I will look into the compatibility of the graphic card though.

Hi,
i did not yet remove the graphic card. That’s a good idea. But I did disconnect the power cord in order to dp the CMOS reset. The reset itselfs works and the BIOS shows up bit onve I adapt the settings as specified innthe guide it won’t work upon rebooting the BIOS. I am not sure which one of the settings is causing the problems.